


Back to the Start

by Hinn_Raven



Series: RVB Angst War [13]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, RvB Angst War, S15 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 12:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11185539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: Tucker stumbles across a room full of armor one day on the base. He doesn't think anything of it until later.SPOILERS THROUGH EPISODE 10 OF SEASON 15





	Back to the Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sroloc_Elbisivni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/gifts).



> Let’s get in on the Season 15 angst train! @sroloc–elbisivni requested: “ Tucker finds the murder fridge before they find wash and Carolina. Maybe he realizes. Maybe he doesn’t.” and I was TAKEN. 
> 
> **Warnings for:** RvB15 Spoilers through episode 10, implied character death

Temple has a room full of weird armor. Tucker finds it on their third day, when they’re wandering around the base just looking at shit.

The room is weird and circular and cold, and Temple finds him after barely a few seconds have passed, breathing heavily. Surprisingly, he’s not bothered by Tucker wandering around—Tucker knows he’s been corralling Dylan, and well, given that they don’t know anything _about_ Dylan, that’s fine with Tucker. Instead, Temple tells him the story of the room.

He tells Tucker it’s recovered Freelancer armor—they found it near places where the Freelancers disappeared. So they’d recovered them, brought them back to the base, put the pieces together again to see if they could figure out what had happened. Who the Freelancers were, how the UNSC had caught up with them. It’s part of their proof about what the UNSC is doing, Temple says, and he moves his arms grandly and he’s so _sure_.

Temple’s a real leader, Tucker thinks.  

The place smells awful, and Tucker doesn’t want to linger. He doesn’t have the best track record with empty suits of Freelancer armor. They’re weird ones too—odd helmets and bright colors and they’ve been posed in weird ways, but Tucker doesn’t even question it when Temple tells him that Cronut did it. It’s probably some weird artistic statement that Tucker can’t understand.

“We’re going to avenge them,” Temple says, and he places a hand on Tucker’s back, warm and comforting. “I promise you, Tucker.”

Later, when he stares at Temple with his heart pounding in his ears, the smell of that room comes back, of the way that all of the Freelancers had been twisted into fighting form.

And Wash and Carolina are down in that room. Maybe they’re already adding to the smell. The smell of putrid bodies and sweat and human waste and _death_.

The reason Tucker had wanted to get out of that room so badly, he thinks as he draws his sword and charges Temple, is because some part of him recognized a mass grave when he saw one.

He’d seen one, he’d smelled it, and he had done _nothing_. He still hadn’t realized. He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t gone back. If he’d gone back, he might have seen Wash and Carolina and _realized_ that something was _wrong_. 

It’s his fault that they were down there, Tucker thinks wildly as Temple lets out a laugh—a laugh so like Felix’s it makes his skin crawl—and falls back, while Surge raises a gun.

It’s his fault.

He needs to go down there, needs to find them, needs to find out if they’re okay, because if they’re _not_ —

What the fuck is Tucker supposed to do?

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on Tumblr if you've got more angst war prompts!


End file.
